Posted by Andrew Miller

We’ve talked a lot about PrinterLogic’s capabilities when it comes to network printer management, and how it provides you with a centralized web-based admin portal that’s both feature-rich and incredibly easy to use.

But did you know that PrinterLogic also offers the same level of simplicity and efficiency when it comes to managing printer drivers?

Plenty of our customers already do, as indicated by a recent survey
from the independent research firm TechValidate. That survey found that 76% of the respondent organizations used PrinterLogic to simplify and streamline their printer driver management.

Those respondents weren’t a uniform group. They came from every sector: government, real estate, education, transportation, manufacturing, nonprofit, construction, banking, and healthcare—to name only a few. They also ranged in size from small businesses to large enterprises, including members of the Global 500, the Fortune 500 and the S&P; 500.

In each case, PrinterLogic enabled these organizations—regardless of their size, regardless of their expertise—to regain control not only of their network printer hardware but also the software required to interface with that hardware. Historically, drivers have been one of the most problematic aspects of keeping an enterprise print environment running smoothly. But PrinterLogic changes all that. Its streamlined printer driver management gives you centralized management of all your printer drivers in a single repository. From this console, you can push out driver updates to printers on end-user workstations with ease. You can choose to do so selectively, or you can even schedule mass updates to take place automatically outside of business hours.

PrinterLogic also avoids the classic issues of incompatibility. Its universal support means that it works with all printer drivers, from manufacturer-supplied to custom-coded. And because PrinterLogic isn’t partial to any one platform, managing printer drivers is an uncomplicated process in Windows, Mac, Linux or hybrid environments.

The same goes for virtualization solutions such as Citrix, VMware or VDI. PrinterLogic’s seamless printer driver management means that all drivers are automatically managed and updated on Citrix servers and VMware or VDI virtual machines you might have throughout your organization.

Maintaining and updating drivers is one thing. PrinterLogic, as all those satisfied customers can attest, actually goes one step further by giving you fine-grained, expert-level control over every aspect of your organization’s drivers. Use it to quickly access detailed profile configurations and adjust parameters like print resolution, duplexing, paper size, paper source—any setting that the printer supports, as a matter of fact. Then you can choose to apply these custom profile configurations during the initial printer install, each time a user logs on, or even after the completion of a print job.

Printer driver management isn’t the only way PrinterLogic improves day-to-day handling of drivers, either. It integrates with your current WAN caching technologies to conserve bandwidth by avoiding cross-WAN driver downloads. So it ends up saving IT resources in every possible area.

It’s safe to say that many of those organizations first deployed PrinterLogic exclusively as a robust print management solution. Those impressive TechValidate numbers show how many of them are now enjoying its manifold benefits as a printer driver management solution too.

Posted by Andrew Miller

Driver management. Those two words are enough to make some folks sigh in despair. Because it’s one thing to manage all the networked printers throughout your organization—but drivers, as necessary as they are, end up adding another layer of complexity to the situation. And with that complexity comes a whole host of issues that can emerge and require extensive troubleshooting.

In your print environment, maybe you have a mix of hardware by different manufacturers. Maybe you use universal drivers for some equipment, custom drivers for others, and manufacturer-supplied drivers for others. Maybe you use different configurations of the same driver for different sites and departments. When it comes to driver management, all those are variables that are hard to monitor and change—especially when you factor print servers into the equation.

Then there are driver updates, which can require loads of WAN bandwidth and cause incompatibility issues with certain hardware. Sometimes you want to automatically push out those updates enterprise-wide, and sometimes you want to do it selectively to particular workstations or groups.

As many of our customers have already discovered, PrinterLogic allows you to take control of all those potential driver management problems. In fact, according to a recent TechValidate survey of PrinterLogic customers, more than three-quarters of the respondents said that PrinterLogic helped them find a simple and efficient way to manage drivers.

What does PrinterLogic do that’s so special?

For starters, it has rock-solid universal support. That means it just works with all printer drivers and end-user workstations—it doesn’t matter whether your drivers are custom or manufacturer-supplied, or if you’re in an environment that’s Windows, Mac, Linux, or a combination of all three.

PrinterLogic also allows you to manage your drivers, just like your printers, from a single pane of glass. That saves you the time and hassle of traveling to remote sites (or maintaining a satellite IT team) to make driver changes or updates.

Speaking of updates, you can maintain a single driver repository on your local network, eliminating WAN overhead when pushing out new versions. You also have the option of deploying updates to end-user workstations manually (for added control) or automatically (for added convenience).

Furthermore, PrinterLogic gives you precise control over how each driver is configured. You can adjust common driver settings such as dpi, duplexing and paper size, thereby limiting or expanding the options for your end users depending on the scenario. You can even dive deeper, accessing advanced settings in the driver interface that can adjust any function the printer is capable of providing.

Give PrinterLogic a try and see for yourself how easy it is. And the next time someone mentions driver management, you might join the rest of our customers and cheer instead of sigh.

Check out this page for even more information on how PrinterLogic enables you to manage drivers easily and efficiently across your entire enterprise print environment.

Posted by Jordan Lindsey

In today’s print management ecosystem, the availability of the physical device and the need to know what is and isn’t working is a high priority. PrinterLogic can transform your printing environment into a centralized direct IP environment, removing the need for print servers, server management, downtime, and other daunting tasks. PrinterLogic also makes available the SNMP status of the physical devices, helping you avoid a long lasting paper jam, a tray being left open on accident, or other errors that can cause unnecessary downtime.

PrinterLogic constantly communicates and reports back any errors the printer currently has, e.g. printer is low on paper or has a paper jam. Each printer managed by PrinterLogic has a “Status” tab that allows the instant view of that printer, including: Community Name (adjustable), Ping Status, Last Updated, Console Message, Operational State, Current Status, Error Condition, Model, Color (supported), Duplex (supported), Uptime, Hostname, IP Address, MAC Address and Lifetime Page Count. You can set a timer on how you view this information, or you can always click a refresh button to get an instant new view.

Along with the Status tab, there are also reports that can be viewed or used as a dashboard. You can view “All Printers” or “Printers w/ Errors Only” which will give you a view for the entire company. You can sort on any column, search certain times, names, errors or other information that is relevant for you to find exactly what you are looking for. Each report can be set to auto-refresh, they can also be exported out, allowing you to easily and quickly email the report to someone to further address a printer hands on.

SNMP monitoring is great, but what you really need is the ability to be proactive about monitoring your printers. PrinterLogic provides the ability to notify whoever you choose—whether that be IT admin, help desk or your MPS—when there is an error. You can choose what error spurs the notification, enabling you to preemptively eliminate help desk calls and downtime for users.

To learn more about how PrinterLogic’s SNMP monitoring can help your printing environment, schedule a demo today.

Posted by Devin Anderson

Are you using Windows Server 2012 as your print management solution? Are you seeing things like the additional drivers greyed out? Maybe it’s not showing printers or the printers appear to be missing altogether?

You can run into lots of problems when using Windows Server 2012 as your print server, particularly when pushing out printers to your end users with group policy objects (GPOs). GPO scripts might be relatively easy to create, but GPO settings certainly aren’t forgiving, and something as basic as an unchecked box can cause a deployment to fail. That’s usually followed by hours and hours of troubleshooting.

With PrinterLogic, however, you can overcome all the limitations of utilizing Windows Server 2012 as a print server. PrinterLogic allows you to deploy printers to the Active Directory (AD) user, computer, group, container or organizational unit (OU) with a lot less fuss than Window Server 2012 normally requires. Better still? Not only can you fine-tune further options within container and OU deployments, you can also deploy your printer according to hostname, IP address (or range thereof), or even the MAC address of the workstation.

Furthermore, deployments that you schedule in PrinterLogic are installed after the user has logged in to his or her workstation—unlike GPOs or scripts, which take place while a user is logging into his or her workstation. That simultaneous process makes troubleshooting and error logging a lot more difficult with Windows Server 2012 than with PrinterLogic.

That’s why more and more companies of all sizes have used their Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2012 print server migration as a chance to put true best practices into action and make a wholesale switch to PrinterLogic, eliminating the slowness, hassle and frustration of print servers for good.

If you’re running Windows Server 2012 right now and experiencing any of these issues, there’s good news. PrinterLogic features a simple import utility that is designed to make the print management migration effortless. It does so by copying the following information from your Windows Server 2012 print server into the PrinterLogic database:

• Printer name
• Location information
• Comments
• Port name (IP or hostname)
• Protocol (RAW or LPR)
• Both 32- and 64-bit drivers for that printer

Once the import has completed successfully, you can use PrinterLogic alongside Windows Server 2012 or you can permanently abandon your print servers along with all their problems. With or without Windows Server 2012 as your print server, PrinterLogic will allow you to centrally manage all the printers in your organization from its single web-based administrative console and deploy them as direct IP printers to your end users. You’ll wind up with greater at-a-glance control over your print environment, yet day-to-day management will be simplified—as will the printing experience for your end users.

Who would have thought that Windows Server 2012 issues could have such a great outcome?

Posted by Andrew Miller

Of all the headaches that are associated with managing an enterprise print environment, what would you say is the at the root of most of those issues?

If you said “printer installation,” you’ll find yourself with plenty of company. With traditional print management solutions, the list of things that can go wrong is endless. A driver incompatibility or one mistyped setting can lead to hours of troubleshooting.

Installation also frequently forces end users with varying levels of computer skills to meet skilled IT professionals halfway. That’s why routine printer installs account for so many service desk calls: “I’m not seeing the new printer.” “It says there’s been an error and to contact the system administrator.” “There are three printers available to install. Which one do I choose?” “My old printer was working yesterday, but now the new one isn’t.” You and your support team are probably all too familiar with comments like those—not to mention the frustration and confusion that usually accompany them.

But what if you could make routine printer installation for end users as easy as a mouse click?

That’s not a pipe dream—that’s exactly what you get with PrinterLogic. No wonder a whopping 89% of our customers surveyed in a independent TechValidate study say that PrinterLogic helped them simplify end-user printer installation.

PrinterLogic achieves such impressive figures in this area by doing what it does best: simplifying the complexity of enterprise print environments. Our print management solution provides a single consistent printer installation portal across your entire organization, so every employee sees the same easy-to-use interface regardless of their location or department. These end users can then easily browse, select and automatically install the correct printer. You can even upload an optional floor plan, making printer installation as intuitive as clicking the desired spot on a map.

Of course, the end users are only presented with what’s necessary for proper, painless installation. On the backend, you and your IT team are able to deploy those printers to specific Active Directory users, computers, groups, containers and even IP address ranges. That way, you retain complete control over configuration and deployment, but end users are given the confidence and empowerment to install printers by themselves without relying on service desk assistance. It’s a win-win situation that saves time and boosts productivity.

To find out more, visit our

page

describing PrinterLogic’s self-installation portal in a bit more detail.

Using industry shorthand, we often broadly describe PrinterLogic as a print management solution, but it’s also helpful to think of PrinterLogic more explicitly as network printer management software. True, that’s a bit of a mouthful, but in some ways it better captures PrinterLogic’s core strength of straightforward centralized management of your enterprise print environment.

Through PrinterLogic’s centralized direct IP printer management, you’re able to centrally manage every single networked printer in your organization by using a single web-based admin console. You can manage using domains or trusts—but then again, you don’t have to. The Administrator console shows a simple tree view that allows you to quickly locate printers by country, state / province, city, building, or floor and modify printer attributes such as; driver, default settings, IP address, etc.

When you modify any one of those settings, they are automatically applied to the printer configurations on the end-user workstations. As you might expect from any network printer management software worth its salt, you can even use a convenient find-and-replace function to search for particular attributes and change them individually or collectively.

And with a network printer management tool like PrinterLogic, you don’t just get central oversight and control of existing printers. You have the ability to centrally create new printers too. By adding a familiar object such as an Active Directory (AD) group or an IP address range to the “Deploy” tab in the admin console, you can instantly deploy printers to end users. The printer will automatically be installed on the end user’s computer during the next login event or following a refresh of the PrinterLogic desktop software client. At the time of creation, you even have the ability to specify the new printer as the default printer on a one-time or permanent basis. This process is as straightforward for one printer as it is for 10 or even 1,000.

And when it comes time to remove one or more of those printers, you can do so manually or automatically based on specific criteria you set.

Bundled with all this are powerful, more granular management options. When using PrinterLogic as your network printer management software, you’re able to configure driver settings such as resolution, duplexing, paper size, and lots more right from the admin console. You also have the ability to monitor and manipulate individual printer queues. Is there a stuck job at some distant remote site that’s holding up the works? You can identify and delete that job on the end user’s workstation directly from the admin portal.

When you think of having such versatile features like these at your fingertips, maybe calling PrinterLogic a mere network printer management tool is an understatement. It’s more like the Swiss Army knife of network printer management software!